Describing this tapestry of lyrics, quotes, prose, and epistles as "part documentary, part public pillow-talk, part personal epic—a descant, a canto unsung, a banal history, a true fiction, lyric and political," Lawrence Ferlinghetti combines "universal texts, snatches of song, words or phrases, murmuring of love or hate, from Lotte Lenya to the latest soul singer, sayings and shibboleths from Yogi Berra to the National Anthem, the Gettysburg Address or the Ginsberg Address, that haunt our nocturnal imagination." In the tradition of Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, and Ezra Pound, Ferlinghetti cruises our literary and political landscapes, past and present, to create an autobiography of American consciousness.